SWAGAZINE originated within the online community in Santa Barbara at a now defunct BBS we knew as Swagland. The personalities who graced our electronic medium shared messages of such considerable talent that we decided to pool our efforts, take on the world, and start a magazine of our own. Several years later, the BBS world had migrated to the Internet and so had our publication.

Swagazine focused on prose and poetry both as art forms and entertainment media. Social, philosophical and liberal political themes were dealt with, but not in a way that mimicked news magazines or purely didactic writing. It was not our goal to educate our readers; we presumed they were already educated.

Here we examined the dynamic relationship between the mind and the voice; between the conscience of people and the standards of mass society; between the message of the endangered individual and the moronic giant of popular opinion.

While it was initially our intent to spotlight our local talent, eventually we were open to submissions from anyone, anywhere. All we asked of contributors was to create freely and honestly. Trendiness was not valued; we probably wouldn't have even recognized a fashionable approach if we saw it. Writers were invited to take all the risks they wanted; no subject matters were forbidden prima facie.

Our electronic magazines were vehicles for aesthetic experiments and entertainment; we were not making money, and so we could offer any to our submitters. What we did offer was participation in an artistic endeavor that would bring writers and artists together and into opposition; the artist became the art and the art was let out of the closet, the disk drive, and the soul.